Whether it still remains I know not, as many years have gone by since I passed that way.
T. B. B. H.
"BEHEMOTH."
(Vol. ix., p. 77.)
Hobbes's Behemoth forms the eighth tract in the collection relating to the civil wars by the Baron Maseres (1815), and occupies nearly 200 pages. The Baron, in his Preface (pp. lxxviii., lxxix.) gives the following character of the work:
"It is written in a very clear and lively style, and contains a great deal of curious historical matter concerning the rise and gradual increase of the Pope's power over temporal princes: the prohibition of marriage in secular priests; the doctrine of transubstantiation; the institution of auricular confession to a priest; the institution of Orders of preaching friars; and the institution of Universities and Schools of Disputation; (all which institutions, he observes, had a tendency to increase the power of the Pope, and were made for that purpose,) which is set forth in pp. 467, 468., &c., to p. 472. And much other interesting matter, concerning the sentiments of the Presbyterian ministers, the Papists, the Independents, and other sectaries. The pretensions made by them to Spiritual Power, and the nature of heresies and the history of them, is clearly and justly described in another part of it; over and above the narration of the several events of the civil war itself, which I believe to be faithful and exact in point of fact, though with a different judgment of Mr. Hobbes as to the moral merit of the persons concerned in producing them, from that which, I presume, will be formed by many of the readers of this history at this day; which difference of judgment between Mr. Hobbes and the present readers of this work, will be a necessary consequence, from Mr. Hobbes's having entertained two very important opinions concerning the nature of civil government in general, and of the monarchical government of England in particular, which in the present age are thought, by almost every Englishman who has paid any attention to the subject, to be exceedingly erroneous."
Subjoined to his reprint of this tract, the Baron has appended remarks on some particular passages therein, which appeared to him to contain erroneous opinions.
C. H. Cooper.